Over the past couple of weeks, the Northwestern Ontario Innovation Centre partnered with food consultancy ‘The Greater Goods’ to host a series of workshops focused on food manufacturing. The Greater Goods are a food industry consultancy that aims to help food businesses increase their profits by reducing their ingredient and packaging costs as well as increase their sales. Their areas of expertise are food brokerage and distribution, market opportunity assessment, food product development, branding and packaging, optimizing sourcing and manufacturing and launch strategies. Three workshops were held, and topics included: Product labelling, scaling up your food business and exporting.
The workshop on product labelling provided an overview of the product labelling and nutrition fact requirements in Canada. Susan Van Ryswyk, a food labelling specialist with 15 years of experience, led the session on product labelling requirements. Susan introduced attendees to the Canadian Food and Drug Regulations and Safe Food for Canadians Regulations, as well as mandatory information required on labels. These include but are not limited to the common name, net quantity statement, list of ingredients and allergens, nutrition information, company name and address, date coding and storage information. Susan then switched gears into a Q&A session where attendees could ask her product labelling questions pertaining to their specific businesses.
The workshop on scaling up your food business was led by the CEO of The Greater Goods, Bernard Verkaaik, who has over 20 years of experience in the food industry. The theme of the workshop was ‘7 crucial steps that will lead your business to success'. These were market opportunity assessment, brand positioning, retail validation, cost of goods sold analysis, branding, product development and manufacturing. Bernard provided a wealth of detail in each of these focus areas and allowed attendees to ask questions as they related each focus area to their specific businesses.
The final workshop in the food manufacturing series focused on exporting to new markets, specifically European markets. This workshop was led by Mariette Lutgerink, who holds a Master’s degree in Food Management and has worked in the food industry for most of her working life. Mariette opened this workshop with an overview of the market potential in Europe and some key trends for food products in the European market. Mariette than provided some key steps to consider when entering new markets. These were market developments (what does the market look like), key data product group (opportunities and threats) and competitors (who are the main competitors, what are their prices, how do they position their products). Mariette went on to explain how packaging and labelling requirements in European markets can be significantly different for Canadian regulations and also highlighted the need to utilize a food broker when exploring opportunities in these new markets.
In summary, this workshop series hosted by the Northwestern Ontario Innovation Centre and The Greater Goods food consultancy provided attendees with an overview of the basic packaging and labelling requirements in Canada, crucial steps to consider as food manufacturing businesses are expanding and some keys to exporting to new markets, with a focus on the European Market. Food manufactures are encouraged to reach out to the Northwestern Ontario Innovation Centre as they are starting or scaling up their business here in Northwestern Ontario.
Written by Corey Jones, Regional Business Advisor with the Northwestern Ontario Innovation Centre.